


Come As You Are

by waferkya



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Fluff and Angst, I'm not saying that Grantaire is a genius but Grantaire is a genius, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras is in a band, and a social centre. Grantaire is mostly annoying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come As You Are

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so as far as I know, social centres are more of a thing here in Italy than France but. They’re cool places. So. (◕ ◡ ◕)✿
> 
> (Sorry about the songwriting.)

Enjolras is used to people turning his way when he walks into a room — out of a shop or a car or a pub and into the street — up and down the stairs of a library — even as he jogs in the park at six-point-five in the morning, wearing the most worn-out pair of track pants he owns, his curls constantly slipping out of the flimsy, messy attempt at a ponytail he keeps tying on the back of his neck because how can he hope to change the world when he can’t even tame his own hair.

Enjolras is used to the attention, he tries not to care much for it and most days he loathes it, but even then, it’s not like there’s anything he can do about it. The thing that he likes instead — the thing he never ever wants to grow used to — is the red hot slap of adrenaline whenever he walks on stage, and people stare up at him as they always do, yes, but they _listen_ , too. They stop whatever it is that they’re doing to listen to him, and sometimes their mouths hang open a little as Enjolras sings and usually talks, in-between songs; sometimes, after the show some of them will stop by the collective’s stall, eyes bright and happy with an inspiration that Combeferre and Courfeyrac and Eponine and Enjolras — Enjolras’ voice — set ablaze. Some of them will show up at the meetings. Some of them will keep coming back.

That’s what Enjolras likes: the drums and the guitar and the bass crunched together with his own voice, booming and throbbing through an eager crowd, _meaning_ something.

And if, as he’s singing or denouncing the latest government abuse or simply chanting hymns to Freedom and Justice, more often than not his eyes will end up looking for a mop of black curls standing very very still just on the edge of the mosh pit, well, that’s nobody’s business but his own.

 

It’s the morning of their first big gig, The Kind Of Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity To Seize Everything You’ve Ever Wanted That Eminem Talks About In That Song of His, as Eponine had called it, even making finger quotes mid-air, but she was totally overplaying it; it’s just a show and, okay, they’re actually getting paid this time, and, yes, all right, it’s in a real club, a big club, the kind of club where people from their scene _don’t_ go — oh, fine, it’s fucking huge, in perspective. And from another perspective, it clearly means nothing, because world hunger is huge; war is huge; genocide is huge and the ozone hole is huge and murdered journalists are huge.

So it’s the morning of their first big gig, and Enjolras might be this close to a nervous breakdown because last night Combeferre went and had the brilliant idea of breaking his fucking hand.

“Do you want to maybe break my other hand too? It might make you feel better,” Combeferre volunteers, with a gentle, reasonable smile. Enjolras is pacing and he stops just long enough to glare at him.

“Don’t tempt me.”

Combeferre ducks his head to hide a chuckle, but Enjolras looks like he’s actually considering the idea of stomping on fingers as a stress-relief measure, so he doesn’t offer again.

They’re all gathered in one of the spare rooms of the center, clattered with tables and chairs piled up high and even an ancient, worn-out leather couch stuffed in an angle. The usual, idle chatter that comes with the band’s — and therefore, the collective’s — meetings has been replaced by a somber silence that almost tastes like defeat.

Enjolras refuses to accept that, and he knows they’re all waiting for him to come up with a solution; but he can’t think of anything, because Joly has only just started actual training and he will never agree to try and swap Enjolras’ left hand for Combeferre’s broken one — not that it would solve it for them anyway, because Enjolras still needs both hands to play his guitar, and he’s thinking in circles and not going anywhere and if only Grantaire could stop staring at him for five seconds, Jesus Christ.

Enjolras stops abruptly; why is Grantaire even here right now? How is he awake before noon, when he’s most certainly nursing one hell of a hangover from last night? Enjolras recalls seeing him drain no less than eight gin and tonic without the tonic, and then he stopped counting — nevertheless, Grantaire’s here, like he is most of the time, his arms crossed and his ridiculous knitted hat pulled low on his ears, shoving black curls into his eyes, which are fixed on Enjolras. And so very blue and bright and wait, maybe he’s still drunk? That wouldn’t be the first time.

Enjolras opens his mouth to ask that, but Eponine, perched on top of her throne of six stacked chairs, claps her hands on her thighs before he can utter a single word.

“Okay, here’s what’s gonna happen,” she says, fiercely enough that even Grantaire tears his eyes off Enjolras to look at her. “I can take up the drums, no problem, but you’ll have to play the lead guitar. Can you do that?”

Now, the lights in the room must be off, or maybe the Earth’s axial tilt got tipped off scale in the past five seconds, or _something_ , because it looks like Eponine is talking to Grantaire — and surely, it can’t be.

Except Grantaire is now smirking slightly, disentangling one hand from the crook of his arm to scratch the back of his ear.

“I don’t know,” he says, his voice light — and then he looks straight at Enjolras before asking, “Can I?”

Enjolras blinks once, twice. He can’t _believe_ this. “You can play the guitar?”

“I asked you first,” says Grantaire, without missing a beat. Jehan, curled on the couch next to him, hides a chuckle behind a hand.

Enjolras breathes in, very slowly; and breathes out, even slower. He’s entirely, entirely calm.

“Do you have any knowledge of how to play the guitar?” he asks with his best polite voice. “Do you have any training, any experience? _Would you be able_ to play one?”

Grantaire’s smirk widens. “I have a vague ambition in that direction, yes.”

“Don’t listen to him, he’s actually very good,” chimes in Jehan, and Grantaire elbows him playfully in the ribs. Enjolras takes a step back, and Grantaire’s eyes are back on him.

“Aw, could you look more surprised, Apollo? I am wounded,” he says, with an easy smile and a hand dramatically pressed to his chest for emphasis. Enjolras might be induced to think he is joking, but with Grantaire, he’s never sure.

He clears his throat and turns to Eponine. “You will be fine with the drums, I trust.” She nods and gives him a thumbs up, so Enjolras allows himself to relax, just a little. He runs his hands through his hair and sighs. “Fine. But we’re skipping _Rooftops_.”

 

The day he definitely starts orbiting around Enjolras, Grantaire is severely drunk; he’s looking for a bathroom and stumbles into a meeting instead, nine or ten pairs of eyes turning his way when he pushes the door open and pokes his head in.

He recognizes Eponine, — sitting close to the guy who’s been tailing her constantly, Grantaire can’t remember his name even though he’s sure they have been introduced, — which is how he knows this is not just some meeting he interrupted; in front of his eyes are the infamous Amis de l’ABC, the belligerent core of the entire social centre. Which means that, somewhere in there, there must be also — _ah_. Grantaire smirks a little and pities the booze that makes him so blind.

Enjolras is standing in the very center of the room, his face slightly flushed, his hands hanging frozen mid-air; even without bright, colorful lights framing his curls, without the smoke crawling up his slim legs, without the guitar strapped across his chest and without a microphone clutched in his hand in a way that has lead Grantaire’s exceptionally vivid imagination down some very, very wonderful boulevards, Enjolras looks every last bit like the preternatural creature he plays on stage; which means that it is not a play, after all. Grantaire is drunk but he still finds it slightly unfair.

“Well?” the beautiful, beautiful Cherub says, with a scolding glare, and suddenly he’s terrible and terribly fierce, Grantaire can see in flashes the lines of wings unfolding behind his back.

He ducks his head and he wants to say, _I’ve been looking for you_ , but that sounds a little over the top even to his intoxicated synapses.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says instead, with a brilliant, brazen smile, and he goes to sprawl across the empty chair closest to where Eponine is sitting.

He never even meant to be there, but he’s back the following week, and the one after that, and again the one after that, and again, and again — and he’s never late again.

 

Enjolras is going to murder Grantaire. He has read enough about war crimes to know a significant amount of terrible, terrible things you can do to a man, and he is going to inflict every single torture he has ever heard of on Grantaire; he is going to be cruel, and merciless, and despicable, and all the things Enjolras never is, because Grantaire deserves the worst, he _is_ the worst, he is —

“Oh, there he is,” says Eponine cheerfully, as if they’re not five minutes away from show time.

The goddamn idiot takes off his beanie as he walks to them through the crowded backstage; he unwraps his scarf from around his neck.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, ducking his head with a small smirk, like he’s remembering something. Enjolras wants to strangle him — why is Enjolras not strangling him? — but Eponine shoves in between them, and when Grantaire’s coat has been safely tucked away with all the others in a big pile on a bench, she hands him her guitar.

“The set list is taped to the stage floor.”

“You are a Godsend,” Grantaire tells her with a grin, but he doesn’t really look up from where he’s fiddling with the strings, the tip of his tongue nipped between his teeth. Is he trying to tune the guitar _right now_?

“Had you bothered to show up for sound-check, not to mention rehearsal, you would know that guitar is perfectly tuned,” Enjolras says, gruffly. Grantaire hums absent-mindedly, strums his thumb across the strings and then lifts his head.

“Oh, but I couldn’t do that, now could I?” he says, a small smile tugging at the corners of his stupid, stupid mouth. “Gotta keep a little mystery.”

Enjolras opens his mouth and he intends to tell him in great detail what exactly it is that he thinks about his _mystery_ , but a girl with a headset Apparates out of nowhere to tell them it’s time to get it on.

As he walks past Enjolras, Grantaire winks and whispers in his ear, “Do not worry about me, Apollo.”

Enjolras glares at his back all the way to the stage, but then they’re up there and that’s more important than anything else.

“We are the _Musains_ ,” Enjolras says into the microphone, and he’s met with loud cheers and screaming — he sees Combeferre and Jehan in the third row, Cosette and Musichetta a little closer on the left, and then an ocean of faces unknown that makes his heart flutter in his chest for a split moment. “And this is _Engels_.”

Eponine calls the time tapping her sticks together four times, and they’re on: Enjolras doesn’t even have the time to worry a little more about Grantaire, his fingers flying on their own to wrap around the microphone and tugging it free from the pole. _Engels_ is a lively song, fast-paced and extremely catchy; the lyrics are not one of their most meaningful, but the recurring, terrible pun of Engels-instead-of-angels — entirely Jehan’s fault, — is usually enough to win an amused smirk from the literate audience.

They can do this.

 

They argue over _everything_.

Enjolras is very, very used to the obliging audience of his friends—his _comrades_ —people he’s met throughout the years of activisim within the center. They are like him. They are hard-working and stubborn and they hold a great deal of trust in politics. They believe, like he does, that they will certainly be able to change the world, if they can reach out to just enough people.

Grantaire is nothing like that.

Enjolras knows him, vaguely, because everyone who hangs out at the centre ends up knowing pretty much everyone else; Grantaire is that guy with the too big Foo Fighters t-shirt, who’s friends with Eponine and was one of the dozen artists who did the giant mural painting in the main hall, the one who only asked for a six pack of good beer in return — “Both as payment and fuel,” he’d said, with a wink that wasn’t meant for anyone in particular, and a grin as sharp as a knife which Enjolras might’ve thought about another two or three or twenty times in the following days.

He had had hope, for Grantaire, had even asked him to join them on the collective’s assemblies sometimes — “We do a lot of talking,” Enjolras had said, almost apologetically, “but it’s the kind of talking that needs to be done.”

Grantaire had laughed and said, “That’s very socratic of you.”

He had a smudge of green paint on his cheek and Enjolras had been pleased, he thought, _if he can be smart and think of Ancient Greek philosophers when he’s busy creating art and mildly intoxicated, what will he be like when he’s sober and focused?_

But Grantaire never came and when Enjolras mentioned it to Eponine, her face went very serious as she said, “No chance in hell.”

Enjolras had frowned. “But he comes to the centre all the time.”

“He lives around the corner.”

“But he did _the painting_.”

“He was drunk, Enjolras.”

And she said that in the kind of definitive voice that means, _I’m not discussing this with you any more_. Enjolras had bit his tongue, for he is an arguer down to the very core of his being, and let it go. He didn’t understand and he didn’t like it.

And then Grantaire’s headful of curls poked in, interrupting him in the middle of his speech about Keynes’ _Essays on Persuasion_ , and when he’d stumbled forward to grab a seat, half drunk and half smiling, Enjolras suddenly understood what Eponine was thinking.

And then, from the following meeting, when he’d cleared up his head a bit — but not too much, as he always very kindly reminded them all, bringing at least two beer cans with him every time, — Grantaire started talking back, posing questions and arguments and poking at every word that left Enjolras’ mouth. Only rarely Combeferre’s, and even less than that Courfeyrac’s, never Eponine’s, or Jehan’s, or even Marius’ for crying out loud, but always, always, always Enjolras.

There’s a stubborness to Grantaire that Enjolras can’t help but admire.

He doesn’t believe in anything, he said so himself so many times, and yet he won’t give up showing up and wasting a great deal of effort and breath to defend causes, ideals, books, even movies he doesn’t even like — just because Enjolras has an opinion about them, then Grantaire has to challenge it.

He’s so, so _difficult_ , with his dry humor that will earn him at least a snicker from everyone in the room, which is something Enjolras has never been able to stir, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t be delightful and funny and witty: he is serious. He is focused. He is enraged. He is righteous. Grantaire will talk about Seneca with the kind of deep familiarity one could have of their closest friends, and then casually mention that political failure and Courtney Love are the two main causes of suicide among geniuses.

Grantaire is infuriating. He stirs a sort of red-hot blind single-mindedness in Enjolras that he has never felt ever since he was a teenager; yes, Enjolras is passionate, but he doesn’t go stupid with rage, he is more than able to control himself — he has learned to do that, keep his voice level and the growling at a minimum, pack it up and let it loose only on stage, if ever he needs to. He believes in being a pain in the ass of the establishment, poking the dragon awake when he’s crushing the village under his big, uncaring body, but he would do that with class. With a plan. With reason.

Except, Grantaire won’t let him be peaceful. Grantaire, who rolls his eyes and crosses his arms and tugs his beanie down on his ears, Grantaire who knows so many things but nobody’s ever seen him with a book in his hands, Grantaire who drinks so much, who goes to their shows and doesn’t cheer, doesn’t even move if he can help it.

Grantaire, whose polemical remarks are, to Enjolras, a constant reminder that, no matter how universally right you _know_ your cause is, there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t think so, because human beings are stubborn like mountains, and just as obtrusive, and not at all simple. Grantaire, who’s the opposition to Enjolras’ opposition.

Grantaire who just _has_ to make everything so damn complicated.

 

By the time the third song is over, Enjolras finds himself kneeling on the very edge of the stage, the people in the first row reaching out to try and touch him — he smiles when he sees Cosette and Musichetta pressed against the security barriers.

He shoves himself back up in one smooth motion, and he can’t hear himself but he thinks he’s talking about something and the audience is screaming back at him; when he turns around — he needs his guitar for the next song, _where is it where is it where is it_ , — he meets Grantaire’s eyes, very blue, very big, very bright and very much pinned to him.

Grantaire smirks. Enjolras blinks.

They’re good, and the truly surprising thing is that apparently, he’s the only one who’s surprised.

 

It is a great painting.

It takes up the entire back wall of what was once a dark, gloomy room stuffed with enormous antebellum brick-kilns and the dried hopes and dreams of so many generations of labourers, Enjolras likes to think, back when the building was a factory still in business; there’s a big glass wall now that looks onto the courtyard, and they use the room as a main hall and it’s bright and coloured and then there’s the painting.

It’s half graffiti and half Renaissance fresco, thick gashes of colour next to meticulously detailed folds of cloth and flowers and buildings; it’s an homage to Delacroix’s _Liberty Guiding the People_ , mostly, with the gorgeous, glowing woman on the foreground stepping up and almost out of the wall, — Grantaire painted her almost completely on his own, — but there’s also a touch of _The Fourth Estate_ in the shape of the crowd following her, the stencilled shadows of oppressed workers and women and children. And then there’s Nature, sprouting out in bold shades of green and red and blue, ivy framing the bottom of the wall and sprayed by an angry ocean that in turn splits to bushes of roses and sunflowers, a thunderstorm slipping in from the horizon — and there’s words crawling throughout the entire painting, thick and thin and small and big, short quotes like tiny snakes and longer paragraphs hiding in the background, and that was Grantaire’s idea, too.

Enjolras likes to run his fingers along the sharp angles of the sentence that curls around the ankle of the girl that is Liberty, like a tattoo — _libertà va cercando, ch’è sì cara, come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta_.

Whenever he’s in the room, Grantaire keeps his eyes glued to the floor.

 

Grantaire _is_ good, and Enjolras only fully realizes it after the second verse of _Secrets Unbound_.

There’s a guitar solo there that took Eponine two weeks to properly learn, and she hates it so much that a couple of times in the past they’ve agreed to let her skip it, cutting the song short and leaving Combeferre’s naked drums to build up the frenzied rhythm for the explosion of the last chorus, and it works, it works just fine, as long as they agree on it earlier, which they didn’t, because Grantaire never showed at rehearsal—

Enjolras is thrumming with energy and restlessness and a blinding fucking fear, but Grantaire bares his teeth in a wolfish grin and — and he’s playing, he’s playing all the right notes without breaking a sweat and then he’s picking up his tempo and is he improvising? Oh for the fucking love of God _he’s improvising_ , and he doesn’t stop playing faster and faster and faster and now he’s turning his back to the audience to get closer to Eponine — Courfeyrac takes a step back to let him through with a big grin — and Eponine is smiling breathlessly and doing just fine, her hands flying across the drums so fast it’s actually impossible to keep track and Grantaire has a foot propped up on a small amplifier and he’s tilting his hips back and forth and that guitar is going to _catch fire_ in a second and _this is it_ , Enjolras thinks, _this is what sex must be like_. (He’s not even wrong.)

Grantaire’s music slows down, just barely, and he picks back up the right chords again, the one Enjolras is expecting and knows; Grantaire looks at him from above his shoulder, — still playing, effortlessly and flawlessly and way, way better than Enjolras will ever be able to, — gives him a small nod, his eyebrows arched up, and suddenly, Courfeyrac’s bass is back, and Enjolras is singing, and they’re not just good, they’re amazing.

(Enjolras is as shocked as is the crowd.)

 

They host a cineforum and a series of public debates for the International Women’s Day. Grantaire is there like he’s been to every single other of the collective’s initiatives, and he’s drunk, and at some point, somehow, he is trying to explain to an audience of slightly baffled middle-aged women how gender issues are not restricted to sexism, instead it’s an amazing variety of consequences of the stubborness with which society keeps trying to shove dualisms down everyone’s throats — “Binomials only make sense in maths and Euripides,” he mutters — the civilization of opposites is wrong straight at its fundaments and how do you overthrow that? Not by giving out flowers and carrying around a photograph of Clara Zetkin, of course not.

Enjolras clears his throat and tries to put together a reply, but Grantaire is half-sunk in his chair now and his head is tipped back and when Jehan elbows him lightly, he doesn’t move.

He’s asleep and that’s the first argument between the two of them that doesn’t leave Enjolras flushed, his eyes blown huge and his hands almost shaking with how much he wants to _hit_ Grantaire.

 

Enjolras has taken a moment to drain a water bottle when he hears it, a chanting that blossoms in the back rows, the ones he can’t even begin to see, and quickly grows in volume and rhythm as it runs into the stage.

_Rooftops_ , they’re screaming, asking, and begging. _Rooftops_ , their most successful song by a long stretch, the one that even got them a bit of press, a bit of attention from the radio, the one he’s heard that girl on the tube hum absent-mindedly as she checked her phone. _Rooftops_ , and Enjolras cringes, puts down the bottle and wonders, what the hell is he going to tell them now?

Eponine makes that decision for him. She starts playing.

There’s a round of truly _hysterical_ screams from the crowd now; Enjolras runs a hand through his hair.

“Okay,” he says, over the looping drum-and-bass intro. “ _Rooftops_.”

He doesn’t have to turn around to know that Grantaire is looking at him.

 

There’s a kiss, or rather, quite a number of kisses they share in the cramped little bar attached to the social centre. Enjolras is drunk, and it’s stupid. Grantaire is drunk, too, but that’s hardly breaking news.

They’ve just come back from a silent protest, sparked by yet another cut to the public funding to education. Ten hours sitting in the courtyard of La Sorbonne in perfect stillness and stubborn silence have left them all cranked and tired and freezing cold, but buzzing with an energy that wouldn’t let them sleep, so they’re back to base, all of Les Amis and a couple dozens of the students that had joined them throughout the day.

They have raided the bar’s supply of booze and food, there’s been singing and debating and yelling and cursing the government, the establishment, the fucking professors who won’t raise their voices even with a gun to their head, and every last thing that came to mind; Enjolras is finally warm and content with his life, with his friends, with the way he has spent the day.

At some point, he ended up sitting next to Grantaire, who’s in a good mood, too, and is currently dissecting every single word Immanuel Kant has ever had the nerve to put down on paper — and Grantaire knows them all by heart, apparently, — while Marius keeps nodding thoughtfully, or maybe he’s just about to doze off.

Enjolras leans into the soft leather of his seat and listens, for a while. Then he’s reaching out, and he hasn’t ever really thought about doing something like this until now (he has), but he’s reaching out and he’s taken Grantaire’s chin in his fingers and he’s tilting his head his way and brushing their lips together, suddenly, or not so suddenly really, because Enjolras sees it all as if time has stretched like a cat’s back — Grantaire’s expression shifting so very slowly from annoyance at being interrupted to surprise to confusion to disbelief, his eyes going wider and wider and his lashes fluttering but he won’t shut his eyes, so Enjolras doesn’t, either.

It’s a soft touch, barely even there, but after, Grantaire licks his lips.

“You are very drunk, Apollo,” he whispers, suddenly careful.

“And you are still talking,” says Enjolras, and Grantaire’s huff of laughter feels warm against the fingers still holding onto his chin.

A beat, long enough for a thousand thoughts to spin around Enjolras’ head if only he wasn’t so drunk that he has entirely forgotten how to make his brain work, and then Grantaire is leaning in. Enjolras closes his eyes this time, gives in and lets Grantaire softly lick his way into his mouth.

He mumbles incoherently into the kiss, grabbing a handful of Grantaire’s soft curls, pressing closer, kissing him harder. Grantaire is warm and tentative at first, and then he grows terribly hot and almost ravenous under his hands and his lips and Enjolras finds himself, minutes or hours or maybe even centuries later, kissing him goodbye and wishing he didn’t have to ever let him go.

It occurs to him, then, that he doesn’t have to. He has a home — a bed — he can take Grantaire to. He can. He should. He wants to. Why doesn’t he? He leans in, unaware of the worried glances Eponine and Combeferre and Courfeyrac and everyone have been shooting his way ever since he fisted his hand in Grantaire’s hair, and he’s ready to ask, even if he has no idea how — but Grantaire turns his stupid soft head and kisses him again instead, chaste and delicate.

He looks very, strangely sober as he lets go of Enjolras’ hands with a small smile; he gets into Courfeyrac’s car without another word, and Enjolras doesn’t follow because he’s still not sure what just happened. Eponine has to tug him away, or he wouldn’t have moved at all.

Enjolras wakes up at three in the afternoon with a splitting headache that not even coffee can cure, but he has a meeting to attend, and somehow, he makes himself go to the centre. Grantaire is not there, which doesn’t surprise him; Jehan makes up some flimsy excuses for him, which Enjolras dismisses with a shrug because honestly, he’s dying. He’s beyond caring right now.

Grantaire skips the next two meetings, too, but not the shows, he never misses the shows; Enjolras is still definitely content, up there on his high horse. Then Combeferre breaks a hand.

 

_And the lie that broke the roof of your mouth is the one I loved the most_ , he sings, his face scrunched up around the words, his curls falling into his eyes, and before he can even think about what’s coming next, another voice booms out of the speakers to get drowned by the singing crowd, saying, _The moon can’t tell you the things I dream when I’m dreaming of you._

And Enjolras replies, _When the rain won’t wash the bloodstains from your eyes_ , and Grantaire tells him, almost sweetly, _I’d like to hold your hand and take you home — show you the moment I knew my requiem would be the breath that I take from you_.

Enjolras is only half-aware of the fact that he’s still playing, but he knows he’s absolutely drawn to the sound of Grantaire’s voice, which is raw and open and thick and rough and in that punch to the gut Enjolras finds himself burned clean rather than gently showered with the ethereal caress of Eponine’s words.

He’s not sure he’s ever going to like this song again.

 

(From Grantaire’s perspective:

At some point, the fact that Enjolras looks so surprised, and doesn’t even bother to try and hide it, every time he shows any hint of skills at anything, should start to feel at least a bit offensive.

It doesn’t.)

 

Grantaire ducks out right after the show, and Enjolras might have gone after him, if he’d realized right away. But he didn’t, and when he does, — that is, when Bahorel walks up to them with the broadest smile, demanding to see _that fucking drunkhead who’s been hiding all of_ that _for all this time, I can’t believe him, I’m gonna kick his head in_ , and they look for him, and can’t find him, — Grantaire has been gone for too long already.

He takes a mental note to call him first thing in the morning, and when he doesn’t, it’s simply because he’s late for class (he isn’t), and then he’s late for lunch with Marius (he is, but when has Marius ever been on time?), and then he has to run some errands (you don’t really need two hands to operate a shopping cart, Enjolras, you could be on the phone just fine), and then suddenly it’s the middle of the night and wow, how could the _entire_ day slip from him so quickly? (Because he willed it.)

When he’s warm in bed and this close to finally, finally dozing off, Enjolras thinks of Grantaire on stage — his head a mess of curls of ink, his hips tipped off-balance, his eyes sharp and focused on the guitar, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, a tiny smile playing at the corner of his pink swollen mouth — and his voice.

Enjolras turns and tosses for another three hours, too stubborn to reach out to his nightstand, grab his phone, and make a call.

 

“He got under your skin,” Combeferre says, quietly. Enjolras frowns over his pint of beer that’s thick and golden and the only thing to touch his lips that’s not a cigarette since this morning.

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

Combeferre’s smile is tiny and smug and almost as infuriating as Grantaire’s. Enjolras takes a long, long sip of his beer.

“You think it isn’t?”

He doesn’t know. (He does: it’s not. But it is.)

“It’s cathartic,” he admits eventually, stealing a french fry from Combeferre’s plate and nibbling at it. “Arguing with him, I mean. But it’s also very useless, and I don’t have time for useless. I don’t _do_ useless.”

He cringes the moment he says that, but it doesn’t show on his face because Combeferre gives him a hard look.

“The fact that he doesn’t share your world view doesn’t make him useless.”

Enjolras sighs. “I know. I don’t think he’s useless.”

He doesn’t. Grantaire is far from useless — as much as Enjolras hates to admit it, and as annoying as he can be, and so, so very wrong, he’s also constantly offering a great, stimulating challenge when playing the devil’s advocate. His remarks are often clever and well thought, more than once he’s been able to point out flaws — insignificant as they were, — in Enjolras’ reasoning or phrasing, or spur very interesting discussions with his seemingly random, rambly rants.

And he’s educated. He admitted to have Googled most of the quotes for his wall painting in the main hall, but he’ll rattle off facts about history and arts and philosophy and classics like other people may talk about the weather, and sometimes Enjolras thinks that maybe he doesn’t even get _all_ the references Grantaire makes when he talks, and that makes him feel very bad about himself. Which is something unusual.

Grantaire is a nuisance. He is also a resource. He is also drunk, most of the time.

Enjolras sighs. “He’s just—I feel like he’s wasting himself away. Probably that’s what makes me so angry at him.”

Combeferre smiles and flicks a bit of bread at him. “You should tell him that.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes. Yeah, as if.

 

He needs a quiet place to wrap up an essay that’s due next week and home is not a viable option, because Combeferre finally invited Eponine over and Enjolras has no desire to be a witness to whatever it is that’s going to happen. He just hopes they’ll keep it out of his room. And the kitchen. And possibly, the couch. He likes that couch.

He considers a visit to the centre’s bar, but quickly dismisses the idea: seeing how it’s usually packed with the most noisy, politically active people of Paris, there’s no way Enjolras could get any work done in there ever.

Which is why he ends up at the coffee shop where Eponine works, a lovely little establishment which has the significant perk of only offering fair-trade products.

And is also completely full.

Enjolras rolls his eyes, slightly annoyed, and he’s ready to back up and away when he spots, at a corner table near the window, a familiar knitted beanie. Grantaire is poured over his sketchbook, his pencil flitting on the page in quick strokes, a tall papercup of something sitting forgotten in a corner where his elbow won’t risk knocking it over; he seems to be there alone, and he’s taking up less than half the table anyway, so it’s entirely reasonable for Enjolras to drop his bag on the empty chair across from him.

Grantaire looks up, startled by the noise; there’s a faint scent of brandy about him, and his eyes are slightly unfocused as they run up and down and then again up Enjolras’ body, finally settling on his face.

“Good morning,” Enjolras says, flatly. Grantaire merely spares him a grunt before turning back to his sketchbook and quickly flipping the page.

Enjolras is surprised by the rough, cold shoulder, but he collects himself after a moment: it’s still rather early in the morning, and Grantaire has every right to be grumpy. Nodding briefly to himself, Enjolras shrugs off his coat and drapes it on the back of the chair, before sitting down. He gets settled, his laptop on the table and the book he needs for reference carefully balanced on his knees, and then there’s a waitress at his elbow, smiling down at him and waiting for his order.

“A soy chai tea latte, please,” he says, and then he leans over the table to peer into Grantaire’s forgotten paper cup, which turns out to be empty. “And a refill for the gentleman’s hot hazelnut chocolate, thank you.”

Enjolras gives the waitress a tight-lipped smile, and then gets to work. If Grantaire is going to pretend he’s not even there, it’s fine with him.

 

An hour and a half later, Enjolras is done with his homework and he can finally, finally roll his shoulders and stretch his legs a little. He shuts his laptop, which waves him goodbye with a satisfying click, and then he realizes that Grantaire is still there. He’s not drawing anymore, he’s just sitting back, his arms crossed on his chest and a softness to his features that wasn’t there earlier. Enjolras didn’t even notice its absence. (He did.)

Grantaire nips at his bottom lip, and then uncrosses one arm, reaching out to put a tiny piece of folded paper on top of Enjolras’ laptop, pushing it towards him with two fingers.

Enjolras blinks, and there’s a nasty remark on the tip of his tongue about kindergarten being just two blocks away, but there’s something in the way Grantaire is looking at him that makes Enjolras pause.

He picks up the message then, unfolds it, and he doesn’t even try to keep his eyebrows from arching as up as it’s physically possible. Scribbled in the middle of the piece of paper in Grantaire’s thin, scrawny penmanship, sits a simple sequence of symbols:

_:(:_

Enjolras has had to decipher enough of Jehan’s texts to realize it’s a face that’s both sad and happy; he looks at Grantaire, and sees that the smug bastard is barely biting back a grin.

“You’re very welcome for the other night,” says Grantaire, leaning in to put his elbows on the table, and then propping his chin on his hands.

Enjolras nods.

 

(From Grantaire’s perspective:

Enjolras is smart and driven and full of faith. He is inspiring, with the all-consuming force of a god at once gorgeous and terrible and unstoppable. He is innovation. He is spring. He is the bringer of light and Grantaire was used to turn a deaf ear to saviors and messiahs, until he met this one.

He has heard so many people rattle on about social justice and history and revolution, he was comfortable among them for a while, and then he wasn’t, locked up inside his ink-black head to scoff and roll his eyes, but Enjolras has a way with words and a fire inside that make it impossible to look away.

It’s not just the way he holds himself on stage, or his singing voice, though those have helped quite a lot; it’s the fierceness of his beliefs, and his love of everything just and equal and human. Grantaire has never loved anything like that. He thinks he does, now, a little, or he’s beginning to. He goes to rallies and discusses books and when they ask, he’s always glad to lend a hand at the centre’s bar. (Maybe he sneaks out for more cigarette breaks than he should, but that’s what they all do.) He hasn’t backed away from the fights that sometimes stain their peaceful protests; he meets up with Cosette and Marius every Friday afternoon to help them go through their readings for the group. (Cosette only goes because Marius wouldn’t go on his own; she doesn’t need anyone’s help, let alone Grantaire’s.) He even did that fucking wall painting, for goodness’ sake.

Enjolras makes Grantaire interested. Enjolras makes Grantaire listen. Then Grantaire goes and talks, too, but he doesn’t see how that’s bad — maybe when he’s so shitfaced he can’t see straight he tends to get off topic quite easily, but other than that, he’s good at arguing. It’s the best fun he’s had in years.

And he can’t stop thinking about Enjolras, and all the things he’d like to do to give back even just the tiniest crumble of the warmth that Enjolras makes him feel.

But he’s Grantaire, the drunk who’s sarcastic and never passionate and so broken that mirrors would shy away from him if they could. There’s just no, no way he’s ever going to be good enough to mean something to the charming, focused, just-this-side-of-ascetic fighter that is Enjolras. He cannot believe or think or will or live or die, not with the singular intensity that comes so natural to Enjolras.

He wears the ugly bruises from when the rallies turn violent with a pride he’s never felt for anything else in his life.)

 

“It was an amazing show, very much because of you.”

For a moment Grantaire looks so taken aback at the compliment, and the implied thank-you, that Enjolras wants to smack him around the head. He shakes it off with a weak laugh and a tiny nod, and he’s slightly flushed so Enjolras adds on a whim, “Would you play with us again?”

Grantaire looks up at him now like he’s starting to think that maybe he’s not entirely awake, not entirely sober, if he ever was to begin with.

He narrows his eyes and tugs at the hem of his beanie and he kicks Enjolras’ foot under the table, his eyebrows shooting up the moment he realizes that, yes, this is real. This is happening.

There’s a small, almost soft smile tugging at the corners of Enjolras’ mouth that might also be hard to believe in.

“Can I be drunk on stage again?” Grantaire asks eventually, very much serious. Enjolras’ brow knots, which elicits another laugh from Grantaire, so Enjolras feels authorized to ignore the question.

Instead he says, “Let me buy you lunch.”

Grantaire’s smile is still surprised, still half-hesitant, still self-deprecating, but it’s a smile, and he doesn’t say no.

Enjolras doesn’t do paternalistic condescension or pity, however. He doesn’t ever do anything unless he fiercely believes it is right, and just, and good — so when he grabs Grantaire’s hand and twines their fingers together and starts tugging him down the street, he’s making a point, stressing it as clearly as he can, hoping that, for once, Grantaire will get it and agree.

After a moment, Grantaire’s hand squeezes back.  


**Author's Note:**

> The quote in Italian that Grantaire put on his wall painting is from Dante’s Commedia, and the nicest translation I found is: _he seeketh Liberty, which is so dear / as knoweth he who life for her refuses_ ; I couldn’t keep this one out sorry.
> 
> Painting refs: Delacroix’s [Liberty Leading the People](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People) and Giuseppe Pellizza’s [Fourth Estate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Estate_%28painting%29).


End file.
